The term \u2014 conceived 20 years ago as a framework for thinking about equity, diversity, belonging, and student success in higher ed \u2014 is at risk of becoming an empty phrase.<\/p>\n
Welcome to Race on Campus<\/a>. Twenty years ago the phrase \u201cinclusive excellence\u201d was introduced in higher education. Now, colleges use it to describe, among other things, strategic plans and job titles. But what does the phrase actually mean? And are colleges acting on the values of \u201cinclusive excellence\u201d? Sarah Brown has more.<\/p>\n In recent years, you\u2019ve probably seen an increasing number of references to \u201cinclusive excellence.\u201d These days, the term appears\u00a0atop strategic plans<\/a><\/u>,\u00a0in job titles<\/a><\/u>, and\u00a0all over campus websites<\/a><\/u>. I\u2019ve noticed more senior administrators talking about their institutional commitment to \u201cinclusive excellence\u201d during interviews.<\/p>\n But in those conversations, it\u2019s been difficult to pin down what the phrase actually means. I also found myself wondering where colleges got it from.<\/p>\n Inclusive excellence \u201csounds really good, but they have to do the work to make it so,\u201d said Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, who coined the term 20 years ago when she was a vice president at the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Clayton-Pedersen, who now consults with colleges, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations, has mixed feelings about how the concept has taken off across higher ed \u2014 because she doesn\u2019t think many colleges grasp how to act on those values.<\/p>\n Basically, inclusive excellence is a framework for thinking about equity, diversity, belonging, and student success in higher ed, and how colleges can tackle those challenges.<\/p>\n In the early 2000s, the AAC&U had just published its landmark \u201cGreater Expectations\u201d report, which was a call to action for colleges to reimagine liberal education. \u201cEven as college attendance is rising,\u201d the report\u2019s abstract\u00a0stated<\/a><\/u>, \u201cthe performance of too many students is faltering.\u201d<\/p>\n The association started brainstorming potential projects that could put the report\u2019s vision into practice. Clayton-Pederson said she and other senior staff members got together and tried to answer a key question: \u201cWhat\u2019s the DEI piece of this \u2018greater expectation?\u2019\u201d In that meeting, Clayton-Pedersen landed on \u201cinclusive excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe argued about it,\u201d Clayton-Pedersen said. Her colleagues worried that \u201cexcellence\u201d was too high of a bar.<\/p>\n In some ways, the term cements hierarchy, said Lynn C. Pasquerella, current president of the AAC&U. \u201cWhen we talk about inclusive excellence, it implies a kind of exclusivity that is not intended, but can send a hidden message about who really belongs in institutions of higher education,\u201d Pasquerella said.<\/p>\n Still, she said, \u201cthe language itself doesn\u2019t matter as much as the actions.\u201d<\/p>\n Clayton-Pedersen believed that higher ed needed to strive for the ideal of excellence, even if it wasn\u2019t 100-percent attainable. \u201cThe goal is to broaden who can become excellent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Inclusive excellence got its start through a grant funded by the Ford Foundation, and expanded into\u00a0the \u201cMaking Excellence Inclusive\u201d initiative<\/a>. The AAC&U conceived it as a model for improving academic outcomes, especially for students of color and other marginalized groups.<\/p>\n But the framework that resulted\u00a0touches every part of a college campus<\/a><\/u>, including the diversity of faculty and staff members and partnerships with the surrounding community.<\/p>\n Clayton-Pedersen feels that many colleges have pigeonholed inclusive excellence as a classroom idea, when it\u2019s supposed to be broader than that. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about students\u2019 learning,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s also about organizational learning.\u201d<\/p>\n Higher-ed leaders are still battling the false narrative that more diversity means less merit, Pasquerella said. \u201cThere are continuing fears that if we diversify the student body, if we diversify the faculty and staff, that there will be an erosion of excellence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Some people yearn for a past where excellence supposedly reigned supreme. But for much of higher ed\u2019s existence, Pasquerella noted, it excluded large swaths of the population: women and people of color. Were colleges really that excellent back then?<\/p>\n The AAC&U has embraced inclusive excellence as part of its mission. \u201cThere is, of course, the danger that it becomes such a common part of the discourse that it loses its meaning, especially when it comes to accountability and how we\u2019re assessing ourselves,\u201d Pasquerella said.<\/p>\n When Shaun R. Harper was frequently traveling to college campuses pre-pandemic, he often sat down with members of the president\u2019s cabinet. Senior officials discussed inclusive excellence, said Harper, a professor of business and education and executive director of the University of Southern California\u2019s Race and Equity Center. But the term didn\u2019t appear to have taken hold on the rest of the campus.<\/p>\n Campus leaders would talk about inclusive excellence, Harper said, and then continue to trumpet the narrative that excellence equaled prestige \u2014 like winning big research grants and publishing in top journals. In other words, leaders often weren\u2019t connecting their institution\u2019s pursuit of excellence to inclusion.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another problem with feel-good diversity language, Harper said: It doesn\u2019t accurately represent the experience that many students, faculty members, and staff members have had. \u201cIt feels so intellectually dishonest,\u201d Harper said, for colleges to profess inclusive excellence without any data showing whether students, faculty members, and staff members actually feel included on campus.<\/p>\n There are some institutions that are walking the walk on inclusive excellence, Clayton-Pedersen said, like\u00a0the University of Colorado at Boulder<\/a>\u00a0and San Diego State University. SDSU has a\u00a0Center for Inclusive Excellence<\/a>\u00a0that aims to increase faculty diversity and runs professional-development workshops for scholars from underrepresented groups. In the materials Clayton-Pedersen uses when consulting with colleges, she stresses the importance of identifying specific goals, collecting data, and measuring progress.<\/p>\n What does inclusive excellence look like? One example, Pasquerella said, is that colleges should make sure all students have access to study-abroad programs, undergraduate-research opportunities, and other key experiences outside of the classroom. When Pasquerella was president of Mount Holyoke College, the institution began providing paid internships to every student at some point during their college career. That was designed to compensate for the fact that many low-income, first-generation students couldn\u2019t afford to take advantage of internships.<\/p>\n Ask most college leaders what they believe inclusive excellence is, Clayton-Pedersen said, and they\u2019ll probably talk about racial equity. But that\u2019s not how she envisions it. Inclusive excellence must also center the experiences of disabled students, LGBTQ students, and other groups, she said.<\/p>\n In a similar vein, Harper said, it\u2019s also important for administrators not to leverage inclusive excellence as a way to keep talking in generalizations and avoiding the topic of race.<\/p>\n \u2014Sarah Brown<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The term \u2014 conceived 20 years ago as a framework for thinking about equity, diversity, belonging, and student success in higher ed \u2014 is at risk of becoming an empty phrase. Welcome to Race on Campus. Twenty years ago the phrase \u201cinclusive excellence\u201d was introduced in higher education. Now, colleges use it to describe, among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-teaching"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kathryn Byrnes","author_link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/author\/kbyrnes\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/baldwin-clt-teaching-times\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Is \u2018Inclusive Excellence\u2019?<\/h2>\n
Applying the Framework<\/h2>\n
\u2018Intellectually Dishonest\u2019<\/h2>\n